All About Pakistan-Nargis Sarfraz’s Blog

Pakistan is a country full of natural resources, beautiful landscapes and hardworking intelligent people; it is also a country which is unfortunate to be ruled by insincere and incompetent rulers. The army chiefs of Pakistan have on four occasions overthrown the elected governments on charges of corruption and have ruled the country. However these army chiefs have proved to be equally power hungry and greedy. Driven by narcissism they thought that they were a gift of God to the nation and instead of doing any good they did more damage.

The first army ruler of Pakistan was General Ayub Khan. Ayub Khan had a good military record and was the Commander in Chief of the Pak Army in 1951. He also served as a defence minister during the tenure of Mohammed Ali Bogra the 2nd Prime Minister of Pakistan. President Iskander Mirza appointed him as the first Chief Martial Law Administrator of Pakistan. Within two weeks of his appointment as CMLA, he ousted Iskander Mirza and appointed himself as the Field Marshal. Though Pakistan progressed economically under his rule, Ayub Khan made the serious mistake of allowing their ally US open a secret base in Pakistan to spy on USSR which led to embarrassing diplomatic incidents. Ayub Khan infamously rigged the general elections against Fatima Jinnah; however he too was forced to step down by the public.

Yahya Khan’s rule was perhaps one of the darkest phases Pakistan has gone through. A heavy drinker and a womanizer, he was also an incompetent rule. The relations between East Pakistan and West Pakistan were already quite sour when he took over and his oppressive strategies served as a catalyst thereby resulting in the creation of Bangladesh.

Zia-ul-Haq was another CMLA who overthrew the Bhutto government and later became the President. During his regime the Afghan-Russian was took place and through Pakistan, America helped the Afghans to resist the strong and advanced Russian attack. Taliban who have wrecked havoc in our country are a product of this alliance. He allowed millions of Afghan refugees to seek shelter in Pakistan and thus introduced a culture of Kalashnikov and heroine in the country. He introduced Islamic practices in the judiciary and the running of the government and although his intentions were noble, his implementation was weak and instead of becoming an ideal Islamic State, Pakistan ended up tarnishing the image of Islam.

General Pervez Musharaf came into power after removing Nawaz Sharrif. He too promised to restore democracy soon and the soon turned out to be a decade. The challenge faced by Musharaf was the impact of the 9/11 incident on Pakistan. America waged a war on Afghanistan on the pretext of finding Osama bin Laden and Musharraf allowed America to use its three airbases. His policies too proved to be disastrous for the country.